Wednesday, August 26, 1998 Last modified at 12:59 a.m. on Wednesday, August 26, 1998

Overseeing Food Safety

HOW SAFE IS THE food in the United States? While America generally is considered to have the safest food supply in the world, it still has far too many deaths from food poisoning. The Associated Press notes that up to 9,000 people a year die from food poisoning in the U.S.

Part of the problem, the AP notes, is the difficulty in overseeing food safety under the current system. Twelve agencies now oversee various food safety questions, although the bulk of the regulating is done by the Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.

The White House wants to improve food safety and has sought advice from the independent Institute of Medicine about how that goal can be reached.

The advisory group has completed a report that says the responsibility for food safety is fragmented and underfunded. The report recommends appointing a single official to be in charge of setting safety standards and combating outbreaks of diseases - a "food czar," if you will.

The report stopped short of recommending a new federal agency that would oversee food safety, but that is the desire of some consumer groups and legislators.

Shift old bureaucracies rather than add a new one

A new federal agency? The very last thing that our government needs right now is more bureaucracy.

While it would be desirable to have all of the overseeing of food safety under one umbrella, it would be undesirable to have yet another federal agency to burden taxpayers and heap more regulations upon businesses.

However, there is a way to make the concept of a food safety agency - and a food czar, too, for that matter - palatable. If it could be done in a way that did not make government any bigger, it would be worth serious consideration.

For example, the Department of Agriculture currently is in charge of meat and poultry and certain fresh produce issues. If those responsibilities could be transferred to a food safety agency, along with corresponding personnel and money, it would make sense.

In other words, the Department of Agriculture's budget would be reduced by the corresponding amount that would be added to the new agency's budget. And some Ag Department employees would be transferred.

Congress is not likely to go for it. The 12 federal agencies who currently oversee various food safety considerations would fight tooth and nail to keep their budgets and staffs from being reduced.

But that is the way that it should be done. Rather than adding a new bureaucracy, the government would merely be shifting around some of the old bureaucracies. Best of all, taxpayers would not have any additional burdens.